“Now where’s she going—?”
“Guest bedroom.”
“Not as large, but the view is amazing,” drifted out to us from the guest bedroom. Clearly Jessa thought she was narrating her own Trump Tower TV special.
“I like her.” He smiled at me.
I nodded. “She can be a lot to handle sometimes. Stubborn to her core.”
He laughed. “Not unlike her big sister in that way.”
My cheeks warmed. “She’s a very strong girl.”
He studied me for a moment longer before he turned back to the stove, uncovering a pan of already sautéed carrots. He used tongs and tossed them in a small serving bowl, and I watched him move around the kitchen, unbagging a loaf of bread and slicing it.
When Jessa finally returned to the main living room, she was grinning ear to ear. “Just…” She stumbled over to the table as Keegan was setting the dishes down in the middle. “Just…wow.”
The table was already set, and I took the chair across from Jessa as Keegan grabbed a bottle of red wine from the counter and started screwing the corkscrew into the top. He smiled at Jessa as he returned to the table and sat at the head between us.
“Pretty incredible, right?”
“Uh…no.” She pretended to be unimpressed. She shrugged. “Doesn’t quite compare to my place. I mean, it’s okay.”
The clouds were rolling in, and the first pings of sleet were starting to hit the wall of windows.
“In Milwaukee? Is that where you go to school?”
Jessa snorted. “Yeah, right. I hate Milwaukee. We’re from Waterville.”
Keegan cocked his head to the side. “Which is…?”
“It’s like…a few hours from here. ’Bout an hour west of Milwaukee between Milwaukee and Madison.”
Keegan nodded. “Is it a big town?”
“Nah. Not at all.”
I shook my head in agreement.
“Tell me about your parents. Are they still together? Do you live with both of them?”
He tasted the small pour of wine in his glass and then reached for my glass too, filling it for me. I was a bit too busy gnawing on the inside of my lip to thank him. I did, however, reach for the glass the moment he set it down and took a big gulp.
When I glanced up at Jessa, she was already looking at me oddly, as though surprised he didn’t already know about this.
“Oh…” she finally responded. “Well, our dad’s never been around, not since I can remember anyway. Gabe remembers him though. Uh…Mom died like…a year ago?”
“A year and a half,” I corrected quietly. When I looked up to Keegan, he was already studying me.
“She had the C word,” Jessa said in a strange sing-songy voice that tapered off in a nervous laugh. “And I don’t mean cun—”
I cut her off. “He knows what you mean.”
Keegan’s lip barely pulled up at Jessa’s sarcasm. “I’m sorry.” His brow furrowed. “That couldn’t have been easy.”
Jessa shrugged. She was good at shrugging when it came to this topic. “No. But it could have been worse, ya know?”
“How?” I asked, instantly clearing my throat and regretting my interruption. I wasn’t upset with Jessa in the least. I simply disagreed, even if I knew she was largely trying to downplay the topic because it made her uncomfortable.
Jessa looked at me apologetically, but she turned back to Keegan. It was odd. Jessa hated talking about anything at all to do with our parents, but she was the one perpetuating this when I would do just about anything to shut her up.
“It’s just Gabe’s always been the one who took care of us. Mom was…”
“She was wonderful,” I finished with a quiet adamancy to my tone that was driven solely by my defensiveness.
“Yeah,” Jessa agreed, again looking at me as though she was sorry to even say it. Her eyes didn’t return to Keegan then, and she studied me instead. “But she was an only parent. She had to work two jobs just to afford the house, food, clothes…” She finally turned back to Keegan.
All I could do was grit my teeth.
“Anyway,” she continued, “Gabe was the one who always looked after me. But Mom
was
wonderful.”
I nodded as I stared at the table.
“And now? Who takes care of you? With Gabe in college I mean.”
Jessa smirked. “I’m emancipated, bitches.” She laughed awkwardly. “Well, technically at least. Gabe’s still up in my face about pretty much everything, so it doesn’t feel much different than before. She’s my conservator until I turn eighteen, so…”
Keegan’s brow was wrinkled, and his expression was dark. “So you get to just…live alone?”
“Yeah. I have an apartment. We don’t have any other family, so it’s not like there was anyone else to live with. Not like I could crash at her sorority house.” She laughed. “And who’d want to? Besides, I see Gabe every week, and I’m in school all week long, and I work a couple evenings too, so I’m busy.” She shrugged again.
“Couldn’t you have lived with a friend or…?”
I cleared my throat. “Jessa…”
“Nobody wanted me,” she said snidely.
“None of her friends’ parents readily offered,” I clarified. “Jessa’s always had a way of—”
“Pissing people off.”
I shook my head. “People don’t always know what an amazing person she is.” I tried to smile at him, but my lips were tight, and he was just staring blankly back at me.
“How do you afford an apartment?” He was asking Jessa, but he looked at me as he spoke.
“Well, I tried to pay for it myself…at first. You have to prove you can support yourself when you go through the emancipation process. I was working full time in the evenings at the grocery store, and I was going to school, but it was hard, and my grades were slipping. When Gabe found out, she said she was going to quit school and move home and get a job. But I knew she didn’t really want to.” She laughed, but it trailed off quickly when she saw the stoic look on Keegan’s face.
Jessa had no idea what was really behind his mood shift, but I certainly did. He was figuring things out. The pieces dropped into place pretty quickly once you got to this point.
“You should have moved her to Milwaukee.” He leveled his eyes on me.
“She wanted to stay in her own school. People look out for her there. It’s—”
“That’s not the point,” he said, cutting me off.
We were both silent then, staring at each other as Jessa continued to look back and forth between us.
“Listen, I don’t want to live in Milwaukee.” She was trying to pacify Keegan’s obvious disagreement on this. Jessa was silent as she watched him, waiting for his attention to return to her. It took many long seconds before he could, or would, pull his focus from me and shift his attention back to her. “My friends are in Waterville,” she continued. “I grew up there. That’s home.”
He didn’t respond to her.
“’Sides, Gabe’s got this great hostess gig at a really nice restaurant here in Chicago. They share tips, and ’cause it’s such a fancy restaurant, she makes a ton of money, and she doesn’t even have to work that much. She covers the rent, groceries, everything. I just pick up a couple of shifts a week at the grocery store to help out. It’s perfect.” She was still trying to justify her independence to Keegan, but she was failing to understand where the real root of his irritation lay. I wasn’t even sure I understood why this should matter to him.
Keegan’s jaw clenched tight as he leveled his stare on me again. In truth, it was more a glare at this point.
Jessa turned to me. “Hey, we should go there,” she said excitedly. “I’ve never seen the restaurant you work at.” And then she turned back to Keegan. “Gabe says it’s really fancy too.”
I glanced at Keegan, but I could barely hold the eye contact, and I looked away quickly.
I forced myself to smile at Jessa. “Uh…I kinda try to avoid it when I’m not working.”
Jessa looked at me for a moment. “Oh…”
I reached for my glass of wine, taking another large gulp. We were silent as we ate, and Jessa looked back and forth between Keegan and me as though she could tell something was off. Keegan’s jaw looked tight, and he pushed his plate away long before he’d made much of a dent.
When Jessa was finished eating, she stood. “The food was so good I have to pee.” She shrugged as though the sense of that statement should be obvious.
Keegan barely looked up at her as he nodded. He cocked his head to the side as he listened to her walk away, and the moment the bathroom door latched, he turned back to me. “No sob story to tell, huh?” He ran his hands over his face. “Jesus, Gabe,” he muttered.
I didn’t say anything. I just stared at my plate.
He stood abruptly, leaning down and bracing his hands on the chair back as he looked down at me. “You have no business trying to support a teenager.” He was keeping his voice quiet, but his expression was fierce.
I scoffed and shook my head. “That’s my little sister. It’s my job to look after—”
“No, it’s not!” he hissed. “It’s not, Gabe!” He ran his hands over his face again in frustration before pointing in the direction Jessa had gone. “She has no idea what you’re doing to yourself!”
The roof of my mouth ached as I tried to stifle the tears, but my eyes glossed anyway, and I brushed a tear angrily from my cheek as it trickled down. I stood up. “It’s none of your business.” I walked to the kitchen with my plate, but he followed me, standing behind me at the sink with his hand on the counter next to me. He was waiting for me to turn around and face him.
“She’ll be in college next year.” The fact that I was willing to justify myself to him pissed even me off. I shook my head, starting to rinse the plate in my hand.
“Yeah, and then what? Next year she’s a college student in debt up to her eyeballs just…like…you,” he said pointedly. “And that’s your new existence for the next four years. When does it end for you, Gabe?”
I finally spun toward him. “Stop pretending you give a shit. It just doesn’t suit you.” I glared at him. “And by the way, you lost the right to have an opinion on this topic the moment you decided fucking me would be an acceptable way to advance your career.”
His mouth dropped open as a huff of breath left his lungs. His eyelids fluttered for a half second as my comment registered, but then his mouth closed, his jaw clenched tight, his nostrils flared, and his eyes narrowed furiously. He finally turned and walked back to the table, grabbing more plates and angrily stacking them, letting them clank together loudly.
At that moment Jessa re-entered the room. “Everything okay?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I lied.
“Yep,” Keegan agreed, nodding slowly as he looked at me.
When a wall of pelting sleet came down outside, he glanced out the window.
“We should probably just go.” I started walking toward the table, where my jacket was hung over my chair.
Jessa’s shoulders slumped.
“We have to catch the bus—”
“You should stay. I can take you both home in the morning or get you to the bus if you prefer.” His voice was flat, and he didn’t bother looking at me.
“We don’t need you to—”
“You don’t have a clue what you need, dear,” he said coolly, and then he finally met my eyes as he picked up the stack of dishes and carried them to the kitchen.
“Yowza.” Jessa stood there, her eyes wide as she commented on our interaction.
Keegan set the dishes down on the counter and turned back to Jessa. “Sorry, Jessa. Convince your sister to stay, and we’ll find a movie to watch.” He smiled at her, but it was strained.
Chapter 9
Keegan
IT
was a minor miracle she agreed to stay, but Jessa certainly had a way of pleading with Gabe that even stubborn Gabe couldn’t refuse. We’d watched a movie just as I’d promised, but Gabe and I ignored each other the entire time. That’s not to say I didn’t keep my eyes on her. I’d watch her until she’d catch me watching her, and then she’d do the same to me.
They went to bed in the guest room at eleven-thirty, and I’d waited up for another half-hour to see if Gabe would come back out. Surely she was crying out for me to talk some sense into her thick-ass skull. Or maybe that was just my wishful thinking.
But when she didn’t come back out by midnight, I went to bed. The sleet was finally tapering off. It was cold and windy outside, the first real sign that winter was going to be here soon. But sleep was impossible, and after I tossed and turned for two hours straight and nearly strangled myself in the twisted-up mess of sheets on my bed, I finally got up. I stood at the wall of windows looking out toward Lake Michigan for a while, but the air was thick with clouds, and there was little to see.
I imagined her. I couldn’t rationalize why I was drawn to her the way I was. She was beautiful, but it wasn’t her beauty that made my heart race or my balls ache when I thought about her. It wasn’t her looks that made me angry at her either. Her beauty actually seemed to be the last thing I saw anymore when I was near her.
I’d grown up understanding that the world was all about perception—and not my own but that of others. If I had done something that embarrassed my family in some way—failed an important test, not gotten accepted to some club or organization that my family deemed important, hell, dressed inappropriately for an event—I’d paid for it with endless amounts of disappointment and shame. It was as if I’d been trained from an early age to fear the opinion of the world. I didn’t actually like that about myself. I simply understood it. And yet, I built my life around the very concept of image, which I, by my own admission, despised.
Gabe lived her life hiding something so shameful it would destroy her if people found out. Hell, if my family found out I was willingly associating myself with a prostitute, I couldn’t say they wouldn’t fully disassociate themselves from me. But maybe that was it. Perhaps I didn’t want to watch her live her life in fear of her mistakes in the same way I’d become so accustomed to growing up.
But none of that actually explained why the hell I gave a shit. I didn’t know this girl. At the very least I didn’t know her well enough to justify my involvement in her life. And yet, I felt so fucking immersed in it.
I finally resorted to work when I failed to reconcile the mess that was happening in my mind. I sat at my desk, flipping through page after page of records, forcing myself to focus on something other than her. And I managed it for a good thirty minutes. But when there was a light rap on my bedroom door, I dropped the papers to my desktop and turned to face the interruption.